"Unswept" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... feet a little uneasily and glanced round the dirty room. The place looked as though it hadn't been cleaned for a month. There was a hideous accumulation of unwashed utensils scattered everywhere. The floor was unswept, let alone unwashed. And the smell of stale food and general mustiness helped to add to the keenness of the visitor's nervous edge as he waited for ...
— The Twins of Suffering Creek • Ridgwell Cullum
... more than redeemed Boswell's absurdities. He succeeded on the whole in his aim, for the figure that more or less distinctly emerges from the litter of his workshop is lovable; but in spite of all Lincoln's melancholy, the dreariness of his life, sitting with his feet on the table in his unswept and untidy office at Illinois, or riding on circuit or staying at ramshackle western inns with the Illinois bar, cannot have been so unrelieved as it is in Mr. Herndon's presentation. And Herndon overdid his part. He ferreted out petty incidents which he thought ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood
... place. The streets are dirty and ill-constructed, the pavements unswept and often broken, the tramways thrown, rather than laid, down, the gutters neglected. One expects better than this in a city where the tourist spends so much every season. Granted that the tourist is a dog, he comes at least ...
— Letters of Travel (1892-1913) • Rudyard Kipling
... at Interlaken as usual, I took the first train down there, and toiled in the sun from the depot up to the cottages, by way of the hill, which I had never considered steep before, to find my own house deserted, windows and doors boarded up, veranda unswept, hammocks removed. I would not give any of the neighbors the satisfaction of knowing I was surprised and disappointed, so I kept out of sight till they had all been to the hotel for dinner and dispersed. ...
— The Making of Mary • Jean Forsyth
... responded as, with unseen wings, An angel touched its unswept strings, And whispers in its song, Where ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, No. 23, February, 1873, Vol. XI. • Various
... thou find'st unraked and hearths unswept, There pinch the maids as blue as Bilberry— Our radiant Queen hates ...
— The plant-lore & garden-craft of Shakespeare • Henry Nicholson Ellacombe
... the light of day, was not only cold and uninviting, but so bare of even the commonest comforts that Oliver shivered. The bottoms were half out of the chairs; the painted wash-stand stood on a square of chilly oil-cloth; the rusty grate and broken hearth were unswept of their ashes; the carpet patched and threadbare. He wondered, as he studied each detail, how Miss Teetum could expect her boarders to be ...
— The Fortunes of Oliver Horn • F. Hopkinson Smith
... battalion, had come to be known by those in yet higher command. And when in the opening spring of 1865 it became apparent to the leaders of both armies that the long line could not longer be held if a force should enter behind it, and, sweeping the one partially unswept portion of Virginia, cut the railways in the southwest, and a man was wanted to command the artillery in the expedition sent to meet this force, it was not remarkable that the old Colonel and his battalion should be selected ...
— The Burial of the Guns • Thomas Nelson Page
... and the sitting room brushed and set to rights much earlier than was the Day custom. When Janice had done this she came back to the kitchen, to find her aunt sitting in a creaky rocker in the middle of the unswept floor and with the dishes only half washed, deep in a cheap weekly ...
— Janice Day at Poketown • Helen Beecher Long
... young wives just risen from bed, chewing gum and reading the department-store advertisements in the paper, their hair in curl-papers. He found fat women hanging out of windows, their dishes unwashed, their beds unmade, their floors unswept. He found men sick in bed, and managed to sit down at their side and give them an interesting twenty minutes. He found other men, out of work, smoking and reading. He found one Italian family making "willow plumes" in two narrow rooms—one a bedroom, the other a kitchen—every ...
— The Nine-Tenths • James Oppenheim
... Vale of Glamorgan. But called by whatever name, it is a most pleasant fruitful region: kind to the native, interesting to the visitor. A waving grassy region; cut with innumerable ragged lanes; dotted with sleepy unswept human hamlets, old ruinous castles with their ivy and their daws, gray sleepy churches with their ditto ditto: for ivy everywhere abounds; and generally a rank fragrant vegetation clothes all things; hanging, ...
— The Life of John Sterling • Thomas Carlyle
... work to be done. The main staircase and parlor hall were unswept because of the absence of the ...
— Jennie Gerhardt - A Novel • Theodore Dreiser
... been repaired. New houses made of fine white stone, quarried in the district, had been built, and were building. The bitterness of it, if the foul devastating Boche were to come again! There were many evidences of the hurried flight of the last two days,—torn letters and papers, unswept fire-grates, unconsumed food and drinks, beds with sheets in them, drawers hurriedly searched for articles that could be taken away, disconsolate wandering dogs. A few days before it had been arranged that the major-general, his Divisional ...
— Pushed and the Return Push • George Herbert Fosdike Nichols, (AKA Quex)
... red-capped Baker's-queues; wagging themselves; not in silence! For we still live by Maximum, in all things; waited on by these two, Scarcity and Confusion. The faces of men are darkened with suspicion; with suspecting, or being suspect. The streets lie unswept; the ways unmended. Law has shut her Books; speaks little, save impromptu, through the throat of Tinville. Crimes go unpunished: not crimes against the Revolution. (Mercier, v. 25; Deux Amis, xii. 142-199.) ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... waited in the unswept vestibule of an incredibly ornate frame apartment house for the answer to his ring, and the usual: "My goodness! Is that you? Come on up!" he had the feeling of one who stands at a closed door, knowing that when he opens it and enters he will look upon a dead face. The door was Lily's, ...
— The Vehement Flame • Margaret Wade Campbell Deland
... habits and manner of life, are much less cleanly than the Spaniards. The hovels in which they reside exhibit none of the neatness which is observable in the habitations of even the poorest of the other race. The floors are unswept, and abound with filth and mud, and in their persons they are scarcely less vile. Inattention to cleanliness is a characteristic of the Gypsies, in all parts ...
— The Zincali - An Account of the Gypsies of Spain • George Borrow
... all off. Never was House in such a Pickle! The Carpets rolled up, but the Boards beneath 'em unswept, and black with Dirt; as Nurse gladlie undertook everie Office of that Kind, and sayd 'twould help to amuse her when we were away. But she has tidied up the little Chamber over the House-door she means to occupy, and ...
— Mary Powell & Deborah's Diary • Anne Manning
... it; I never saw a cloud from Paris to Nismes half as broad as a twenty-four sols piece. Good God! we were toasted, roasted, grilled, stewed and carbonaded on one side or other all the way; and being all done enough (assez cuits) in the day, we were eat up at night by bugs, and other unswept-out vermin, the legal inhabitants (if length of possession gives right) of every inn we lay at. Can you conceive a worse accident than that in such a journey, in the hottest day and hour of it, ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various
... the steps, somewhat reassured by her kind reception. The room was in utter confusion, the toilet-table covered with powder, hairpins, bows of different colored ribbon, and various bits of jewelry; the hearth unswept, the workstand groaning beneath the superincumbent mass of sewing, finished and unfinished garments, working materials, and, to crown the whole, the lady's winter hat. A girl, apparently about thirteen years of age, was seated by the fire, busily embroidering a lamp-mat; ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans
... of Beauty; Took away our fairest flower, Took our mermaid from the waters, Won her with his youth and beauty, With his keys of ancient wisdom. Who will lead us to the sea-beach, Who conduct us to the rivers? Now the buckets will be idle, On the hooks will rest the fish-poles, Now unswept will lie the matting, And unswept the halls of birch-wood, Copper goblets be unburnished, Dark the handles of the pitchers, Fare thou well, dear Rainbow Maiden." Ilmarinen, happy bridegroom, Hastened homeward with the daughter Of the hostess of Pohyola, ...
— The Kalevala (complete) • John Martin Crawford, trans.
... snow, and turning the curve in the road, was in front of the house. It was shut up. Every shutter was closed, as well as the door, and a sudden chill struck him. Still he went on; climbed the wide, unswept steps, crossed the portico, and rang the bell, and finally knocked. The sound made him start. How lonesome it seemed! He knocked again, but no one came. Only the snowbirds on the portico stopped and looked at him curiously. Finally, he thought he heard some one in ...
— Gordon Keith • Thomas Nelson Page
... and fancy of the poet, they do not indicate that in outward semblance, surroundings or history their author was either fortunate or happy; and as we read them, sometimes we may feel that we are entering the poet's heart-home unbidden and unannounced. But if we have come there when it is all unswept and ungarnished, may we not the more certainly ...
— Testimony of the Sonnets as to the Authorship of the Shakespearean Plays and Poems • Jesse Johnson
... shade in spring save that afforded by the intermittent leafage of the clothes-lines. These yards Mrs. Manstey disapproved of, but the others, the green ones, she loved. She had grown used to their disorder; the broken barrels, the empty bottles and paths unswept no longer annoyed her; hers was the happy faculty of dwelling on the pleasanter side of the prospect ...
— The Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton, Part 1 (of 10) • Edith Wharton
... our flat, so it was in the house as a whole. All doors, beginning with the street door, stood open most of the time; or if they were closed, the tenants did not wear out their knuckles knocking for admittance. I could stand at any time in the unswept entrance hall and tell, from an analysis of the medley of sounds and smells that issued from doors ajar, what was going on in the several flats from below up. That guttural, scolding voice, unremittent as the hissing of a steam pipe, is Mrs. Rasnosky. I make a guess ...
— The Promised Land • Mary Antin
... down and the water-hole enlarged. The cabin, now a rendezvous for occasional riders of the T-Bar-T, had suffered from weather and neglect. The door sagging from one hinge, the grimy, cobwebbed windows, the unswept floor, and the litter of tin cans about the yard, stirred bitter memories in Pete's heart. Andy spoke of Annersley, "A fine old man," but Pete had no comment to make. They loafed outside in the afternoon sunshine, momentarily expecting ...
— The Ridin' Kid from Powder River • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... servants who have a quick perception of what is to be done, and who make all that is directly apparent to the eye look well, but a closer observation shows many an unswept corner and neglected duty; dress-makers and milliners whose work is ornamental, tasteful, and becoming, though the ornamentation is apt to be too great for the value of the material, and the work will now and then come in pieces for lack of being thoroughly finished; teachers who infuse ...
— The Elements of Character • Mary G. Chandler |
